PHILADELPHIA -- A Franciscan friar accused of sexually abusing students at Catholic high schools in Ohio and Pennsylvania killed himself at a western Pennsylvania monastery, police said Saturday.

Brother Stephen Baker, 62, was found dead of self-inflicted wounds at the St. Bernardine Monastery in Hollidaysburg on Saturday morning, Blair Township Police Chief Roger White told The Associated Press. He declined to specify the type of wounds or say whether a note was found.

Baker was named in legal settlements last week involving 11 men who alleged that he sexually abused them at a Catholic high school in northeast Ohio three decades ago. The undisclosed financial settlements announced Jan. 16 involved his contact with students at John F. Kennedy High School in Warren, Ohio from 1986 to 1990.

The Youngstown diocese previously said it was unaware of the allegations until nearly 20 years after the alleged abuse.

"Let us continue to pray for all victims of abuse, for Brother Baker's family and the repose of his soul," Youngstown Bishop George Murray said in a statement Saturday.

After the settlements were announced, the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese in central Pennsylvania said it received complaints in 2011 of possible abuse by Baker at Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, about 60 miles east of Pittsburgh.

Bishop McCort High School hired an attorney to investigate after several former students alleged they were molested by Baker in the 1990s. Attorney Susan Williams said three former students had talked to her in detail about the alleged abuse.

Baker taught and coached at John F. Kennedy High School in the late 1980's and early 1990's and was at Bishop McCort from 1992-2000.

Bishop Mark Bartchak of the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese said in a statement that he was saddened by the news of Baker's death, but declined further comment citing pending legal action involving the diocese.

A message left for Father Patrick Quinn, the head of Baker's order, the Third Order Regular Franciscans, was not immediately returned.

Judy Jones, assistant Midwest director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said the organization still hopes people who know about other abuse allegations against Baker will continue to come forward.

"We feel sad for Br. Baker's family but even sadder for the dozens of boys who Baker assaulted," she said in a statement.

Updated at 6:45 pm ET -- More than 1,200 formerly secret Boy Scouts’ files detailing accusations of child sex abuse within the organization from 1965 to 1985 were published online Thursday by lawyers, one who said the documents revealed an unintentional but “de facto cover-up of abuse.”

The  documents, known as the “ineligible volunteer” files within the organization, were ordered released by the Oregon Supreme Court. Media organizations had sued for the release of the files, part of a 2010 case in which a Portland, Ore., jury decided that the Boy Scouts were negligent in allowing a former assistant Scoutmaster to associate with the organization's youth after he admitted molesting 17 boys.

“What we can read through the files, for us it represents the pain and the anguish of thousands of untold Scouts,” said attorney Paul Mones, who litigated the 2010 case on behalf of victims in Oregon with lawyer Kelly Clark. “While there are 1,247 files, we know that each Scout leader (accused of molestation) molested on the average more than one Scout.”

The attorneys called for Congress to audit the Boy Scouts, which is a congressionally chartered organization, to ensure that the group was following its current policy to protect children from abuse. Boy Scouts National President Wayne Perry said later Thursday the organization welcomed any additional examination by authorities.

Greg Wahl-Stephens / AP

Portland attorney Kelly Clark is shown Tuesday with some of the 14,500 pages of previously confidential documents created by the Boy Scouts of America concerning child sexual abuse within the organization.

The files, which can be accessed on www.kellyclarkattorney.com, represent reports of Scouts allegedly abused by more than 1,200 different Scoutmasters and other adult volunteers across the country.

People will see in the files "over and over again where there is a concern that this material not get out … this will make Scouting look bad,” Clark said. Alleged offenders were also being “given second chances,” he added.

“In too many of these individual situations what happened was a de facto cover-up. I don’t believe that anybody woke up and conspired and said, ‘How do we create a system that would cover up child abuse?’ But when they put the interest of the organization ahead of the safety of kids, pretty soon they were engaged in a de facto cover-up of abuse,” Clark said.

Child sex abuse survivor on release of Boy Scouts' files: This 'empowers us' 

A sampling of some of the files:

-- An assistant Scoutmaster in Texas in 1965 admitted to several acts of “perversion,” a Boy Scout executive wrote.

“ … of course we don’t know yet whether the parents of the boys involved” are “going to file charges or not. The Minister of the Church is doing his best to protect Boy Scouting and keep this incident as quiet as possible …,” the executive wrote.

The man tried a dozen years later to take up the same post in another troop but was rejected.

-- A Scoutmaster in Pennsylvania who admitted to “acts of perversion with several troop members” in 1972 was put on probation though he had submitted his resignation letter. It’s not clear from the documentation if he indeed maintained the post, but one Scout executive wrote about the situation a few months after the first report:

“If it is acceptable with you, I would like to let this case drop. [He] is undergoing professional treatment in an effort to stabilize his emotional stability. He recognizes that he has had a problem and he is personally taking steps to resolve this situation. The community involved is rather unique and one father has threatened legal action which could only injure the Boy Scouts of America. Therefore, I would suggest that we let it drop. My personal opinion in this particular case is, ‘if it don't stink, don't stir it.’"

The man was later allowed to become a Scoutmaster for another troop in 1976 on a probationary status. Two years later, a Scout’s mother filed a complaint saying the man had punched her son in the chest, causing him bruises. The Boy Scouts decided to keep him on a probationary status.

A Boy Scouts' director of field services wrote one year later: “We have had no negative reports on [his] service during this past year. Apparently his character and leadership requirements have been satisfactory.” But in another document, that appears to be dated 10 years later, a Scouting official wrote on stationery from the national office: “This guy is not still in Scouting is he?”

-- A Cub Scout leader in Alaska was said to be caught sleeping in the nude with boys on a camping trip and showing them pornography.

“The response from the national organization … says: ‘I will agree that sleeping nude and showing boys pornographic books indicated very poor judgment in dealing with Cub Scouts,'” said the attorney Clark, who was reading from a letter dated 1981 during a press conference. “'I do not know, however, that this is a serious enough offense to refuse registration anywhere he might try to register unless there are more instances.'”

The file shows that a Boy Scouts' council executive submitted information from the Air Force that the man had faced a court-martial in December 1981. He was convicted of wrongfully and willfully permitting and condoning two boys under the age of 16 to engage in sexually oriented activities.

Included in the file is a newspaper article from 1991 about a suspected child molester. Another council executive had sent it in, noting that he had contacted police who confirmed the suspect was the former Cub Scout leader.

“If we can provide the training we have available for our youth maybe we can give them the ability to recognize this guy wherever he may show up,” he wrote. “Since he seems to be running and has had a past involvement with Scouting, we need to be alert.”

Clark said of the files: “There is absolutely no indication that anybody at least at the national level of Scouting was being proactive to get this problem out in the open to get the help of law enforcement and act sort of proactively with it. You do see regular … examples of top Scout leadership or regional Scout leadership taking steps to try to keep this quiet, to keep it under wraps.”

In a number of the cases, the allegations were later substantiated by court proceedings, the attorneys said. However, in a great many cases no such substantiation ever occurred.

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A report released by the Boy Scouts in September said that 829 of the files from Jan. 1, 1965, to June 30, 1984, involved suspicions or confirmations of inappropriate sexual behavior with 1,622 youth. The report was done for the organization by Janet Warren, a professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia.

Some of the findings included:

-- 486 of the men identified in the files as suspects were arrested at some time for a sex crime. It may have occurred before they got involved with Scouting, as a result of the incident noted in their file or after they left the organization.
--  In 531 of the cases, there was information indicating alleged inappropriate sexual behavior with multiple youths. 
--  In 252 of the cases, the available information indicated alleged inappropriate sexual behavior with only a single victim. 
-- 128 of the men in the files had their registration revoked within a year of signing up.
-- Police were involved in the investigation of 523 cases.

At the time, the Boy Scouts said in a letter that they would review their files created from 1965 to the present “and ensure that all good-faith suspicion of abuse has been reported to law enforcement.” They also said that there “have been instances where people misused their positions in Scouting to abuse children, and in certain cases, our response to these incidents and our efforts to protect youth were plainly insufficient, inappropriate, or wrong.”

Boy Scouts admit response to sex abuse was 'insufficient' 

On Thursday morning, the organization reiterated that in a statement and also noted: “Where those involved in Scouting failed to protect, or worse, inflicted harm on children, we extend our deepest and sincere apologies to victims and their families.”

“While it is difficult to understand or explain individuals’ actions from many decades ago, today Scouting is a leader among youth-serving organizations in preventing child abuse,” the statement added.

In an interview with NBCDFW.com, Perry said: "I would ask parents to look at the programs we have and then judge us versus, maybe not the past, but judge where we are today and certainly judge us against any other youth service organization in the world and they will see that your kids are very, very safe."

He also said later in a statement that the organization would be hosting a youth protection meeting in November with experts to share and discuss best practices.

The attorneys said the files also could inform future prevention of child sex abuse since the documents revealed how pedophiles operated and infiltrated youth groups -- knowledge “no other youth organization had at that time or since,” Mones said.

“The importance is what Scouts could have done with this information,” he said. “At the trial they said they had never looked at the files to examine them for any purpose to protect Scouts. Their one goal of taking Scout leaders out who had molested Scouts, yes … they did take Scouts out. However, the information that they gleaned, how these people used Scouting activities to bring Scouts into their midst, how these guys were not just bad leaders … these people were leading Scouts.”

“So our goal really is to look to the future through the past,” he added.

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For John Mark Buckland, 42, who was abused by a Scout leader at Travis Air Force Base in Vacaville, Calif., the release represented an empowering moment.

“It unveils all the secrecy, or at least a good portion of it, and the secrecy is the biggest demon there is when it comes to things like this, because it’s by being hidden that it basically just eats people away like a cancer,” Buckland, of Huntington, W. Va., told NBC News. 

“We’ve been powerless up to now. We’ve been at the whims of a multibillion-dollar organization that … has all the money to keep us under a desk in a box. And for now, they can’t do it anymore.”

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Gene J. Puskar / AP

Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky is awaiting sentencing for sexually abusing boys, including one identified in court documents as Victim 2.

Updated at 8:01 a.m. ET on July 27: HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Lawyers for a man who claims to be the unknown victim abused in a Penn State shower by Jerry Sandusky in a case that led to Joe Paterno's firing say he intends to sue the university.

The lawyers also released two audio clips that they say are phone mail messages from Sandusky to their client, referred to in court documents as Victim 2.

In the messages from September 2011, which can be heard in the links below provided by the lawyers, Sandusky talks about moving forward and having nothing to hide. In one message, Sandusky offers an invitation to a Penn State football game. He ends both calls with "love you."

You can hear audio of an alleged message from Sept. 12, 2011, here.

You can hear audio of an alleged message from Sept. 19, 2011, here.

The lawyers, Andrew Shubin, Justine Andronici, Matt Casey and Joel Feller, said in a statement that they have done an extensive investigation and gathered "overwhelming evidence" on details of the abuse.

The statement reads in part:

"Our client suffered extensive sexual abuse over many years both before and after the 2001 incident Michael McQueary witnessed in the Penn State Lasch building shower. Penn State has now admitted and there is no longer any question that its top officials could have and should have prevented these acts. Jerry Sandusky's abuse of Victim 2 and other children is a direct result of a conspiracy to conceal Sandusky's conduct and the decisions by top Penn State officials that facilitated and enabled his access to victims. We intend to file a civil lawsuit against Penn State University and others and to hold them accountable for the egregious and reckless conduct that facilitated the horrific abuse our client suffered.

Our client has to live the rest of his life not only dealing with the effects of Sandusky's childhood sexual abuse, but also with the knowledge that many powerful adults, including those at the highest levels of Penn State, put their own interests and the interests of a child predator above their legal obligations to protect him."

Penn State says it cannot comment on pending litigation.

Prosecutors have said they don't know the identity of the boy molested by Sandusky in 2001. The encounter was spotted by former graduate assistant football coach, Mike McQueary, who reported the abuse to school officials, including Paterno, but none of them told police. McQueary said he saw Sandusky and the boy -- now a grown man -- in an "extremely sexual" position in a locker room shower one night. He was a key prosecution witness at Sandusky's trial.

The victim is not named in the attorneys' statement.

Sandusky awaits sentencing after being convicted in June of 45 sex abuse counts related to molesting 10 boys, including Victim 2.

A seven-month investigation by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, commissioned by Penn State, concluded that Paterno, then-university President Graham Spanier and two other top Penn State administrators concealed abuse by Sandusky to avoid bad publicity, thereby enabling Sandusky's crimes to continue.

Below is a transcription of the phone mail messages:

 Sept. 12, 2011:

"…Jere. Um. I am probably not going to be able to get a hold of anybody. Um. Uh. Probably ought to just go forward. Uh. I would be very firm and express my feelings, uh, upfront. Um. But, uh, you know, there is nothing really to hide so. Um. If you want, give me a call. You can call me on my other cell phone or on this one, either one so. Alright, take care. Love you. Uh. Hope you get this message. Thanks."

 Sept. 19, 2011:

"…Just calling to see you know whether you had any interest in going to the Penn State game this Saturday. Uh. If you could get back to me and let me know, uh, I would appreciate it and when you get this message, uh, give me a call and I hope to talk to you later. Thanks. I love you.”

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Updated at 8:36 p.m. ET: Pennsylvania prosecutors are considering criminal charges against former top Penn State University officials for allegedly concealing what they knew about the conduct of former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, law enforcement told NBC News.

As Sandusky's trial began Monday on 52 counts alleging that he abused 10 boys over 15 years, the sources said investigators had obtained new evidence, including internal university email messages and other documents.

Prosecutors made their first public reference to the material in a court filing Monday, saying they included a file on Sandusky that was “created, maintained and possessed” by former Penn State Vice President Gary Schultz.

In addition, prosecutors said, the recently discovered emails “contradict” the testimony of Schultz, former athletic director Tim Curley “and others” before a grand jury about what they knew about an allegation of possible sexual misconduct by Sandusky.

Full coverage of the Jerry Sandusky trial

A spokeswoman for Curley and Schultz said their lawyers had not yet seen the new filing by prosecutors and couldn’t comment on it. Both men were charged with perjury for their testimony regarding Sandusky last November.

Legal sources tell NBC the emails and documents were recently discovered by investigators for former FBI director Louis Freeh, whose firm has been hired by Penn State to conduct an internal investigation into the school’s handling of the Sandusky matter.

The documents, the sources say, show that former university President Graham Spanier and others discussed whether they were obligated to tell authorities about a 2001 allegation involving a late-night encounter in a Penn State shower room between Sandusky and a young boy, both of whom were naked.

The documents allegedly show that university officials even did legal research on whether such conduct might be a crime. But in one email exchange, Spanier and Schultz agreed that it would be "humane” -- to Sandusky -- not to inform social services agencies, two sources said.

Spanier, who was fired last November, hasn't been charged in the investigation. He recently sued Penn State seeking access the emails, saying he needed to inspect them to “refresh his recollection” before granting an interview to Freeh’s investigators. His lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.

The allegation had come from then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary, who testified he saw Sandusky in a Penn State shower room with a young boy committing what he thought was a sexual act. He was so disturbed, he said, that he called late Penn State coach Joe Paterno at home the next morning. Both Schultz and Spanier testified they didn’t report the McQueary allegation because they viewed it as an account of mere “horsing around” rather than sexual abuse.

McQueary — who is expected to testify for the prosecution at Sandusky's trial — originally testified to a grand jury that he saw Sandusky in the shower with a young boy in March 2002. An email revealed Monday indicates that Spanier, Schultz and Curley discussed what McQueary allegedly saw and whether to report it more than a year earlier.

In a statement to NBC News on Sunday, lawyers for Schultz and Curley said "the information confirms that Tim Curley and Gary Schultz conscientiously considered Mike McQueary's reports of observing inappropriate conduct, reported it to the University President Graham Spanier and deliberated about how to responsibly deal with the conduct."

Schultz, who headed the campus police at the time, previously testified to a grand jury that he knew about another alleged incident involving Sandusky and a young boy in a shower in 1998. That report was investigated by local authorities but never led to charges.

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Updated at 7 p.m. ET: A 28-year-old man testified Monday that former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky treated him "like his girlfriend" for more than two years, showering him with gifts he was afraid he would lose if he told anyone about Sandusky's increasingly sexual behavior.

Sandusky, 68, denies all 52 counts alleging that he abused 10 boys over 15 years. Two grand jury reports accused him of having used his connection to one of the nation's premier college football programs to "groom" the boys —whom he met through his Second Mile charity for troubled children — for sexual relationships.

Earlier, on the opening day of his trial, Sandusky's attorney appeared to surprise prosecutors by listing Sandusky as a possible witness in his own defense.

The trial before a jury of seven women and five men heard opened in Centre County Court in Bellefonte, Pa., culminating months of breathless coverage that led to the firing of head coach Joe Paterno, who won more games than any other major college football coach in history, many of them with Sandusky at his side.

Paterno died in January, a few weeks after the Penn State Board of Trustees dismissed him for not having done enough to stop Sandusky's alleged abuse.

The first of eight alleged victims expected to testify — identified as alleged victim No. 4 — said he endured more than 40 "very uncomfortable" incidents involving Sandusky during the two years, when he was 12 and 13 years old.

(Although the men are being identified by name in court, NBC News and msnbc.com do not identify the victims of alleged sexual assaults.)

NBC: Former Penn State president could face charges in Sandusky case

Full coverage of the Jerry Sandusky trial

The behavior progressed from mutual showers in the Penn State coaches' locker room to hugging and caressing to rolling around together on the floor.

Eventually, the shower incidents progressed to Sandusky's placing the man's hand on his genitalia, said the man, who went on to describe more graphic behavior, including attempted sexual penetration.

In rides in his car, Sandusky would put the man's hand on his knee, "basically like I was his girlfriend," which he said "freaked me out."

"I could not stand it, and it happened almost every time I was in the car" with Sandusky, he said.

The man described similar behavior that he said he witnessed with other children.

At a summer camp at the beach, Sandusky would throw children up in the air in the water, "just like you do with a little kid, but he was grabbing them more about the buttocks area," the man said. "It was like brushing over your genitals."

Among the gifts he said Sandusky gave him were hockey sticks, golf clubs, a snowboard, Penn State football jerseys and a cherished spot on the sideline during football games. One time, he said, Sandusky gave him money to buy marijuana, which he said he smoked in front of Sandusky in his car.

The witness said those were things he desperately wanted but was afraid he would lose if he blew the whistle.

"This was something good happening. I never had a father figure, and I'm liking everything I'm getting," he said, adding that he also feared being teased by classmates if they learned that he was "being molested by Jerry."

The witness said under cross-examination that he regretted not having come forward earlier. Had he done so, he said, he might not feel responsible "for these other victims being molested." 

Sandusky attorney targets accusers
Amendola aggressively questioned the young man about his finances, part of a strategy he introduced in his opening statement, when he painted the eight alleged victims as troubled youths out for a big payday in court.

"You saw those eight photos," Amendola said, referring to photographs of the eight accusers as young boys that the prosecution had presented in its opening statement.

"Cute kids — why would they lie?" Amendola asked. "Folks, I don't know, when it comes to money. ...The evidence is going to show that six of these eight young men who are going to testify have sued. The evidence will show these young men have a financial interest in this."

Amendola noted that as long ago as 1998, local prosecutors had declined to bring charges against Sandusky.

"Jerry Sandusky has always said that he is innocent," Amendola said. "The testimony is going to be awful, but that doesn't make it true, and that's the bottom line."

Moreover, the eight alleged victims were already troubled as youths, he suggested, saying they knew Sandusky in the first place only because educators and government agencies had referred them to Second Mile because "they had issues."

Alleged victim No. 4 acknowledged that he was referred to Second Mile by a school guidance counselor at his school because "I got in trouble a lot" outside of class.

Judge refuses to dismiss Sandusky charges

But in his opening statement, Joseph McGettigan, the deputy state attorney general who is leading the prosecution, said the case was about "systematic behavior by a predator."

All of the witnesses are now adults, but McGettigan asked the jurors to "bring your insight (and) understanding of the way children experience things and react to things."

"They were boys. They didn't understand why this happened to them," he said.

McGettigan also indicated that prosecutors would call Michael McQueary to testify, answering one of the key pretrial riddles.

McQueary, a former Penn State assistant coach, told a grand jury that he witnessed Sandusky assaulting a boy in a shower in a locker room and that he told Paterno about the incident.

But McQueary's accounts of the incident have varied. For example, he testified that he was certain that the incident took place in March 2002 and that he immediately reported it to university officials. But the prosecution says it occurred in February 2001 — more than a year earlier — a discrepancy the defense is sure to highlight.

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Patrick Smith / Getty Images

Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

The judge in former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky’s child sex abuse trial on Friday dismissed a last-ditch defense motion to toss the case.

McKean County (Pa.) Senior Judge John Cleland issued a three-paragraph order (.pdf) denying the motion, meaning that all 52 charges remain in place heading into opening arguments, which are scheduled Monday morning.

Sandusky, 68, former defensive coordinator of Penn State’s football team under the late legendary coach Joe Paterno, is accused of sexually abusing 10 boys over a 15-year period. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

A panel of seven women and five men was selected during two days of jury selection earlier this week.

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Patrick Smith/Getty Images

Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky and his attorney Joe Amendola enter the Centre County Courthouse as the second day of jury selection begins in his child sex abuse trial on June 6 in Bellefonte, Pa.

Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET: BELLEFONTE, Pa. -- Lawyers have selected 12 jurors and alternates to hear the child sex abuse case against former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

The seven women and five men on the main panel and four alternates were selected Tuesday and Wednesday in a central Pennsylvania courthouse, according to The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa.

Sandusky faces 52 counts involving 10 alleged victims over a 15-year span. The 68-year-old Sandusky has denied the allegations.

Sandusky's attorney told jurors seven members of the former coach's family had been on his list of potential witnesses.

The jury's composition reflects the area's strong connection to Penn State. It includes a Penn State senior, a retired professor and a woman who's been a football season ticket holder since the 1970s. The woman’s husband also works for the medical group where the father of a key witness Mike McQueary previously worked.

Sandusky's attorney had moved to strike the woman as a juror, but Judge John Cleland overruled his objection.

"We're in Centre County. We're in rural Pennsylvania," Cleland said. "There are these (connections) that cannot be avoided."

Cleland said that unless ties to witnesses or Sandusky were strong, relationships such as hers would not mean she could not serve on the jury, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Eighteen of 40 potential jurors told the court they are mandated by law to report suspected child abuse due to the nature of their job, according to a Patriot-News reporter following the selection process. In addition to the charges Sandusky faces, two top Penn State officials have been charged with not reporting an abuse incident brought to their attention in 2001 by then-assistant coach McQueary.

'Fair shake'
Twelve of the 40 jurors questioned Wednesday morning were excused, including one who knew Sandusky personally. Some were let go because of financial hardship; others because of previous vacation plans.

As jury selection continued, Cleland reiterated that the trial would start Monday at 9 a.m. and run until the end of June, according to PennLive.com. Cleland said he would not sequester the jury once the trial begins.

Earlier, defense lawyer Joe Amendola arrived with Sandusky just after 8:15 a.m. and said he's confident the nine jurors already picked will give "us a fair shake."

Lead prosecutor Joseph McGettigan, Pennsylvania's senior deputy attorney general, said that jury selection was "so far, so good."

Prosecutors have 'bizarre' letters Sandusky wrote to victim, source tells NBC

Jurors are being chosen from among people who live in the State College area, where Penn State's main campus is located.

"I need you to all have an open mind," Cleland told jurors on Tuesday, according to PennLive.com. "This defendant is charged with sexual abuse of children."

9 jurors chosen so far in Jerry Sandusky trial

Sandusky, 68, faces 52 criminal counts for alleged abuse of 10 boys over 15 years. Some of the accusers are expected to testify. Sandusky has repeatedly denied the charges.

On Monday, the alleged victims were told they would have to use their real names when they testified. Lawyers for five accusers had requested their clients be allowed to use pseudonyms.

Victim #4
Prosecutors have obtained multiple incriminating and “bizarre” letters that Sandusky allegedly wrote to one of his accusers, who is known as Victim #4, NBC News reported Tuesday. The letters are allegedly written in the former coach's handwriting.

According to the indictment handed up against Sandusky, the defendant met the boy -- who is now 28 -- through his Second Mile charity and slowly won his trust by giving him gifts and other rewards.

"Victim 4 became a fixture in the Sandusky household, sleeping overnight and accompanying Sandusky to charity functions and Penn State football games,” it said. Usually the persuasion Sandusky employed was accompanied by gifts and opportunities to attend sporting and charity events. He gave Victim #4 dozens of gifts, some purchased and some obtained from various sporting goods vendors such as Nike and Airwalk." 

The case has drawn intense media attention, with about two dozen television trucks parked outside the courthouse.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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